Bonkers Blog September 2013

Mr. Barnbrook
is fond of using the word ‘prevarication’ which is really just
a posh word for lying, a little less harsh perhaps but much the same sort of
thing. He accused councillor Colin Campbell of prevarication following his
shameful appearance on the Sunday Politics Show. The one where
he claimed
that Bexley council allows filming, “you only have to ask”. A lie if ever there
was one as a subsequent Freedom of Information request proved. (See image below.)

Residents have asked for permission to film on ten occasions within the past two
years and everyone got the standard brush off.

Mick Barnbrook’s complaint that Campbell had lied, sorry, prevaricated, on
national TV because no one has ever been given permission to film a council,
cabinet or committee meeting was met with another quotation from the rule book…
So Lynn Tyler, Legal Services’ Team Manager comes out with the same old garbage
about the rules allow filming but it's up to the chairman - all of whom are
under instructions from she who must be obeyed. Then Tyler gets really desperate…
Totally irrelevant nonsense from someone who should know better and who now
looks like an idiot. What is an awards ceremony to do with council meetings?

As part of Mr. Barnbrook’s case he referred to his own recent request to film a
meeting which was turned down by Mr. Hollier, Head of Human Resources…
Ms. Tyler is really clutching at straws now. Just because the council leader
refused a filming request doesn’t mean it’s the norm she says. In the real world,
the leader allows no dissension, everyone knows that. However
thanks to Tyler’s weasel words, Councillor Campbell did not stray
from the truth - to quote the dictionary - when saying that anyone could film,
just ask. But it certainly wasn’t the whole truth.

By the end of her letter Ms. Tyler appears to totally lose the plot. She knows
that she must maintain the pretence that everyone at the meeting was being
disruptive because if that was not the case she must acknowledge that councillor
Cheryl Bacon acted outside the law; so Tyler
repeats her previous lie about group disruption…You
have to wonder how Ms. Tyler knows that, she wasn’t there and neither was any
councillor or council officer. By the time the police arrived the only people
present in the council chamber were four members of the Bexley Action Group;
Mick Barnbrook, Elwyn Bryant, Nicholas Dowling and Peter Gussman. Also present,
having been refused access to Cheryl Bacon’s illegal ‘Closed Session’
meeting, was Danny Hackett, the Labour party candidate for Lesnes Ward at the
next council elections, and me.

I can tell you exactly what happened when the police arrived. Mick Barnbrook
stood to apprise them of the situation and was stopped in his tracks by a
smiling Bobby who said they knew everything about Bexley council because “I read
Bexley is Bonkers”.

Having
thus broken the ice we had a friendly chat about the undemocratic ways of
Bexley council and then they asked us what we planned to do next. I said we were
going to go home, so we then stood and made our way to the exit. The police did
not eject us, as their own press release said; “No offences had been committed”
and we were sitting quietly in a public building. The police were not at liberty to
sling us out and no council official was around to ask them to do so.

Mrs. Lynn Tyler is prevaricating on an industrial scale. Whether she is
inventing these things on her own initiative or under instructions I have no
idea but I see no alternative but to make a formal complaint about her to the
Chief Executive. No one but Nicholas Dowling put a foot wrong at that meeting
and some councillors have been kind enough to acknowledge that fact. It’s about
time our lying council learned when it is wise to stop digging.

At least there is some satisfaction in knowing that the two policeman who
attended the Civic Centre and read this blog will now have absolute proof that
Bexley council lies constantly.